


No One

by handful_ofdust



Category: Oz (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-06
Updated: 2017-01-06
Packaged: 2018-09-15 08:52:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9227696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/handful_ofdust/pseuds/handful_ofdust
Summary: Alone again, naturally: Beecher and O'Reily, in the series finale's wake (post-Season Six), rediscovering old ties.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Epigone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Epigone/gifts).



> Done for Oz_Magi 2005, as requested by likethesun2. Keywords: "Some days are highs, some days are come-downs."

This “new” OZ is whole ‘nother animal, a brand-spankin’ super-max complete with one-person-at-a-time Yard and poured-concrete furniture in each too-small-to-turn-around-twice cell. Visitors and podmates are privileges you earn “back," they’re told, not that Ryan O’Reily expects much of the former. Or much wants the latter, either.

Last time, after that dumb Mick fuck pulled a Belfast on Em City, things took maybe half a year to get back to normal. But Ryan guesses whatever package Keller left behind is proving a lot harder to clean up than the bomb did…trust that freak to have friends with benefits _and_ access to a lifetime’s supply of hazardous material. So it looks like they’re here for the long haul; longish, anyhow.

Nobody but hacks to interact with, so he stops doing that. Nobody he knows on either side of him, even supposing he could hear them through the walls, which he can’t. He sits alone in his pod all day tracking the time by light-fixture flickers, trying to remember what his brochures looked like—was one Sumatra? Easter Island? Huge leaning faces with broken long-lobed ears, blue waves splashing on an endless white-sand beach, nobody around for a thousand miles…Why the fuck did he think he wanted to go _there_ , exactly?

Nights, he hears his own breath reflected back at him from every surface. Wakes up in a cold sweat, thinking—somehow—that it might be Cyril.

*** 

Back before the Cretaceous, when Tobias Beecher was still a real person, one of his drinking buddies used to go on “Zen retreats” to dry out. According to him, they took place at a former Shaker mission house that’d been converted into the eqivalent of a Buddhist monastery: Lots of nature appreciation, lots of fasting, no TV (or art, or non-frosted windows) in the rooms. This is probably somewhat like that, though with a lot more carbohydrates on the menu, and the taxpayers footing the bill.

They don’t have jobs anymore; there’s no one to flirt or spat with, no one to fuck for a bigger slice of pie, no gangs to posture or kowtow to. Reduced to groups of one. In lieu of anything more productive, therefore, Beecher does endless rounds of sit-ups and push-ups on the floor, struggling to imitate Chris Keller’s perfect form. He keeps on going until his hands feel raw, his throat burns, and blood fills his head with enough white noise to keep everything else at bay.

The endless list of Oswald Correctional dead, all those too-familiar names culled away by slow degrees or sudden rush, but gone gone gone just the same; all these missed connections cut short yet still sparking, sputtering, like pulled wires in some disembodied robot brain:

Dino Ortolani: “Stop fuckin’ smiling.” Best advice he never took.

Adebisi falling like King Kong, Said’s knife in his heart.

Hill on the floor, bleeding out in his not-Daddy’s arms; his own father bleeding out in his, still wearing that same sexy aftershave.

Gary’s tiny hand, nestled in a dried brown knot of foam peanuts. Hank Schillinger, forever lost in “Miami”. Vern himself, Macbeth’s last victim—turns out, those ancient theatrical curses really _are_ a bitch.

And Chris, balancing on air, heaving himself backwards, a last poisoned “love you” on his lips. Smiling all the way down.

Now Vern and Chris—twin constants in his orbital swing for seven and six years straight, respectively—are both finally gone, Beecher’s personal solar system has lost what little gravity it once had. He has to keep moving, keep focused, keep himself awake, keep the dreams at bay. Or risk spinning off into the black, into infinity.

*** 

Ryan never planned to die in jail, though he did plan to die old; never planned for Cyril to die before him, either. But here he is, Lord of the Dance no more, managing to outlive everybody he’s ever known: Cyril, baby sis, the fuckin’ Old Man, all dead for his sins, his most grievous fault—two of ‘em Purgatory-bound at best and one hell-bound for sure, just like him.

With Cyril, though, who really knew? He did have that _Forrest Gump_ out, the head-knock some baptism in reverse, washing everything away: Before, after. Every misdeed pre-forgiven, like stupid was a State of Grace. Hamid Khan, the Chink fuck who moved on Ma. Or—

—yeah, on second thought, screw _that_ shit. Just stop it right there and move the fuck on, before anybody does anything they—

(regret)

Matter of fact, Ryan tries not to even _think_ about Dr Gloria Nathan, if he can help it. Puts her out of his mind almost the same minute she occurs to him, replexively, before she has time to take clear shape. Before her name can echo in his mind, bringing along with it a sudden rush of voice, of scent, of feel…

Just makes a fist, slams his teeth together hard like his mouth’s a safety-deposit box locking shut, his bitten tongue the key. Like somebody, somehow, might be watching.  


  *** 

Two months in, Tim McManus comes by for an unexpected one-on-one, not telling Beecher anything he hasn’t already guessed: What happens in Oz stays in Oz, just like Vegas. Felony murder, but no Death Row; Beecher thinks McManus probably wants to feel good he managed _that_ much, at least. But since they both know better, he isn’t doing a particularly good job of it.

“What?” McManus asks, finally, when he catches him looking; Beecher just shrugs—no earthly point in being diplomatic. Says: “Your beard’s gone grey.” And wonders, later, why Timmy-boy gives him that knit-brow no-eyebrows _look_.

There’s no mirror in the pod, of course. But eventually, when the obvious comes to him at last, he surprises himself by laughing right out loud.

  *** 

Next door, in mid-lap, Ryan pauses at the barely-there sound of Beecher’s amusement, a whisper through concrete. Thinks: _I know that crazy fuckin’ guy—_

(Don’t I?)

“Yo, Beech, that you?” He yells, out loud, before remembering why not to. Then, under his breath: “Yeah, that’s _real_ good, O’Reily. Show the hacks you’re losin’ it, why don’t you.”

No reply, either way.

  *** 

And minute by minute, day by day, a whole slow year passes them both by under those changeless lights, in this changeless concrete world.

  ***  

So now it’s Christmas, and they’re ushered out into the mess hall one by one, blinking like moles; a green paper silhouette tree stuck to the wall with paste, branches drooping, while carols on a sick loop blast from the P.A. Some guy who’s not McManus telling them how they’ve passed the first tier on good behavior, how they’re gonna get paired up for count and exercise, and Ryan looks around, unable to spot one goddamn face he recognizes: Just new fish and hacks, with maybe a couple of assholes who were already here when they got transferred thrown in on top. Nobody to dance with worth the fuckin’ time or effort, not from where he stands…

Which is when he sees him, right near the end of the chow-line: Orange coveralls with EM CITY on the back, hair grown out to near biker-length, severe silver mutton-chops. It ain’t the usual “I’m too crazy to fuck with” scruff, but Ryan still doesn’t think he would’ve known him, he wasn’t wearing a brand-new pair of gold-rimmed glasses.

Takes a half-step towards him, mouth opening: Could be “Hey”, or “Yo”, or—who the hell knows, ‘cause his conversational skills kinda suck at this point, after twelve months of him, himself and him. But one way of the other, it dies in his throat before he can voice it, and Beecher chooses that exact moment to turn, locking Ryan in place like he’s fly-papered to the spot, looking retarded. And:

“Looks like you need another brother, O’Reily,” Beecher says, all cool, as though it’s been all of ten minutes since the riot. Back when they were still old heroin-haze buddies, united by their mutual need to make it to safety when the bullets began to fly; when Beecher was surfing on withdrawal and revenge, howling at anything that moved, the perfect kamikaze bodyguard. Before Ryan found that lump in his nipple, took a trip to the Infirmary, and everything from then on went straight to Hell into a size-zero handbag—that crazy love he threw away his parole for growing black and strong inside him, an invisible tumor fed by Gloria’s nearness, her pity, his own sick dreams.

 _Probably could’a done some kinda damage, Beecher and me,_ Ryan finds himself thinking, for possibly the very first time ever. _If I’d kept his back, checked up on him after, made sure Keller didn’t get him on the rebound…_

He clears his throat, drily. Manages: “Funny. ‘Cause that’s just what _I_ was gonna say.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Mmm. Thought so.”

***  

Watching Ryan watch him, warily, those weasel-green eyes narrowed like an accountant’s, searching for signs of weakness. But Beecher’s already had time to make his own mental circuit of the hall, and Christ knows, it’s not like he sees anything better on the menu. At least here’s one dick he won’t have to be prepared to suck—or bite—when the lights snap off tonight.

“I don’t actually think we get to pick our own partner,” Beecher offers, eventually; just what Ryan was waiting for, he guesses. Because the Mick just smiles in reply, scar pulling tight: Well, sure. But there’s gotta be _some_ way around that one, huh?

Probably, yes.

Beecher finds himself smiling too, with something perilously as close to affection as recognition sometimes gets. Remembers that anecdote making the rounds after Preston Nathan’s death—how Gloria Nathan apparently told McManus that no one would ever love her as much as O’Reily, and how she’d just have to learn to live with that. Remembers thinking the same damn thing, or pretty damn close to, about Chris, once or fifteen times upon a time.

But: _I don’t WANT love, not anymore. I’ve HAD that._

(We _both_ have.)

  *** 

So Beecher nods, and Ryan nods back—an invisible handshake, to seal the deal—and nobody around them sees it, hack, con or otherwise, ‘cause nobody’s lookin’. Just like nobody knows enough, as yet, to know they really should’ve been.

 _Suckers,_ Ryan thinks, grinning wider.

THE END


End file.
